Automation vs authenticity: Can AI replace the writer's soul? (Column in The Daily Pioneer)

Will the essence of storytelling — the reflection of genuine human experience — be lost in the rise of machine-generated content?

Way back in the early 2000s, when I started writing my debut novel, it seemed like a daunting task that would take an entire lifetime to complete. Driven purely by my literary instincts and an eagerness to create something authentic, I took four years to finish the story and become an author. To be an author in those days meant a lot. Not many people ventured to do it given the time and effort that one had invested in the process. Cut to the new times, and becoming an author is as easy as blowing bubbles, thanks to the emergence of AI.

Someone I know recently said that they have a target of publishing 10 books this year, and I wasn’t surprised. But can AI-assisted writing be a patch on creative writing that comes from the inner realms of a writer filled with genuine emotions and subjective thought?As a creative writing coach for children, I have often wondered if children will ever need to learn to write in future, and if even readers will stop caring if a piece of writing has come from AI’s backyard or the annals of original human contemplation and creativity.

I have floated this question to people and the responses have been divided. Some believe that in a world that is pressed for time, the source of thought is not as important as the thought itself. If served in an easily, digestible manner, it doesn’t matter where it comes from – man or machine.

While this view has resulted in the spawning of authors around the world, what remains a cardinal truth is that a story or a piece of writing can be resonant with readers only when it is generated in human consciousness. The chief purpose of art and literature is to be able to strike a chord with readers and not to just disseminate information. The reader is looking for a part of herself in the stories, a reflection of common human experiences and the books they read to be echo chambers of their own lives in parts or whole. Authentic storytelling brings with it a chunk of the writer’s soul and it seeks to merge with the soul of the readers. Anything that is generated by a vast reservoir of readymade ideas will be too perfect to evoke responses. Students may be able to produce perfect sentences and passages that will answer a question, but they will not reflect the personality and character of the writer.

What makes a genuine piece of writing enduring and endearing is the voice of the writer and their ability to draw on personal experiences, intuition and a strong need to connect with the audience.

No matter how the concepts are laid out in an artificial piece of story, they will be less distinctive and more formulaic and impersonal.Maybe, our hustling world needs only quick fixes, and as we discover newer methods to replicate human thought, our spirit will also capitulate and settle for the synthetic form of writing. It’s again about what the audience chooses that will determine the future of creativity. If AI can satiate the population, then why would original writers spend time and energy on creating something from the core of their hearts? It is a scary outlook to hold, as a writer and creative writing coach. While a part of me still refuses to believe the doomsday scenario, I am still betting on ethical and moral considerations to deter people from going all out and claiming themselves to be authors and writers without much intellectual investment.

I am under no illusion that writing will remain sacrosanct as it used to be. It will soon become generic and predictable. Or maybe, going forward, AI will be able to generate stylised texts that mimic the voice of a particular writer and erase the distinction between the real and the unreal. It’s a scary and depressive scenario, but one that we, as authentic writers, must brace ourselves for.